


Moving In and Moving On

by hummingrightalong



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, aaric mentioned, jaaron - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-15 06:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16928457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingrightalong/pseuds/hummingrightalong
Summary: Jesus helps Aaron put away some of Eric's things. Can't make a life with someone else when you're living with the dead.





	1. Chapter 1

Aaron got started early, so he could be alone.

It just felt right, folding Eric’s clothes, staring at their collections and wondering which ones to box away. It just felt right.

And then it felt like too damn much.

His shoulders are shaking, and he’s crying softly, not quite into the shirt he was folding- now a days it was crucial to keep anything you could use again. But it smelled like him. His memories are all over everything here.

They’re tacked to the wall, incomplete, and over. He walks by it every damn day, and it kills him, but it seems wrong to let go, to let it go, so it he keeps adding to to it.

In fact most of *his and Eric’s* things can be seen on the shelves across from their shared bed. He can touch them and for a moment be transported to their charity missions, to their vacations across the country, to the adoption process that was *so close* when the world ended. The reason they weren’t home in upstate New York. Someone was flying in to talk. Then it all fell apart. But they were together.

“Let me help.” Paul doesn’t even knock. Maybe he rang the bell. Maybe he was worried. They all were. All his new friends had seen the change in him when he put that thing dragging Eric’s body around down. He wasn’t going to off himself. Eric would strangle him in heaven. Really.

*Jesus* had been a surprise. A surprise he’d resisted. Aaron fought hard. Because he knew the love of his life would want him to...fight for his life, and a little bit to spite him for making him live without him he was determined to be miserable about it. But Jesus came along, and it was just a *thing*, a sex thing, which was a great distraction, and eventually it turned to more.

Now he’d do anything for this guy, was crazy about him the way he could get crazy about Eric sometimes. Obsessive- yeah. Possessive. Dangerous even. Shit, this might be love. He might be *in love* again. Never saw that coming. 

Maybe it’d help if he packed Eric’s clothes, since if Paul didn’t have duties at Hilltop, he’d stay here. Going back and forth wasn’t easy, and it make some people uneasy (ridiculous) but they were going to try to make it work.

He sees the shorter man standing on tiptoe, taking a few pieces of things he and Eric had acquired overseas and moving them gently to a different shelf as he stalks towards the bedroom closet. It’s such an easy, quick series of movements he almost doesn’t notice. But he’s noticed the decor in his place shifting. 

Nothing hidden or thrown out. But there’s less obvious reminders of the deceased love of his life across the bed when he wakes, across the dinner table where anywhere sat there can easily see all the little things that represented the couple making a life together.

“Have you been moving his things?”

“A little. I just thought it would be easier. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Are you trying to make things worse for yourself?”

He’s referring to the music, stood in an mp3 player stereo set. They’ve got enough juice for that sometimes, and Aaron and Eric and scouted a bunch of batteries for little things once. You’d be surprised how big of a score that seems. 

Paul switches songs, nothing more upbeat but just less hopeless. He lets Aaron cry, holding him and asking him gently to stop that because it’s actually heartbreaking. If he can. He doesn’t have to. This sucks. He understands. He’s here.

“I’m keeping anything of his that can fit those big shoulders of yours. Ok?”

“Yeah that’s fine.” Aaron sighs, trying to pull himself together. “I’ll unpack your stuff.”

“There’s not much. This isn’t permanent, unfortunately. And I never had much to begin with.”

“Sorry,” the blond begins. 

“Shh, not today.” Finally they embrace. The big man falls onto his chest, his shirt is wet and there’s muffled apologies. “Just miss him. Miss him as much as you have to and move on.”

“He’d want me to. Demand it.” Aaron replies in a few moments. “He was always pushing me. I was always seeing the worst in everything. People. Places. Life. He made things a little brighter.”

“It’s ok.” Jesus has always been patient about this. Sometimes people forget these days, but it’d only been a little over a year in total since the world ended. This death was fresh as hell. And he was falling for him, knew it was mutual, but this person had been with Aaron a lifetime. He didn’t know him at all, but had heard he was wonderful. Seeing their home together, it was full of perfect memories. They were making it through all this shit because of each other. “I get how hard this must be. Never had anything like it or you before, but I’ll take my time. I’ll share”

The blond laughs. “You’re so strange. But sweet. Thanks. You’re like that. For me. You keep me going. I was wondering there for a while.”

“I love your awkward honestly most of all, Aaron.” They both laugh, and kiss after Jesus dries the other’s tears. “You don’t have to get rid of anything. Except for these clothes, like we talked about-”

“Someone will need them. It’s only right. I know.”

“The silly collections-” Jesus pulls something out of his backpack, a license plate, a new one, and hands a hammer and the short tacks needed to add it to that wall. “You can still have that.”

“I would be delighted to finish our weird hobby with you. And he’d adore the effort.”

“I wish I could tell him I’d take care of you now, but if there’s a way, he knows.”

“Yeah. He knows.”


	2. Growing Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Couple Hijinks  
> Title is a pun, you'll see.

Even after they’d moved in together the dynamic was, simply said, a bit strange.

Paul was small, and sneaky, and thanks to his training made little noise even when he was just padding around the house. Occasionally, that was..disarming.

The shorter man would come up behind him early in the morning, intending to greet him and give him a hug after finishing their morning routines. It took a few times for Aaron to stop screaming at a volume and pitch he wasn’t aware he was capable of, and if he ever had been, it’d been well before puberty at least. The bigger man hadn’t seen a hint of the other out of the corner of his eye, heard or felt him coming with even the slightest creaking of a floorboard. It almost tugged at his heartstrings for a moment, wondering if he’d ever done that to his mother.. 

More importantly, however, it gave him some wicked ideas.

The tall blond wasn’t exactly the ‘smoothest’ when it came to flirting and this was no exception. Waiting until Paul went to help with inventory (everyone had been feeling a bit run down and after a few recent run-ins with the Saviors since he’s moved to Alexandria, he’s been almost too helpful) Aaron came up with a plan to break up the tension of the day- and maaaybe get a little revenge. 

He set to work, pulling boxes out of the closets to collect everything in the cupboard that would be about on level with his new boyfriend, who was a VERY GENEROUS 5’7”. His boyfriend does not believe that ID he’d produced for a second, it’s not like the DMV measures you, they take your word for it.

Aaron should’ve guessed when Paul never complained about the basic setup of the kitchen cupboards (Eric was only two inches shorter than his partner so it was never much a problem for him that the blond was an ACTUAL height of 6’1”). When he returned home, somewhat tired and a little worn as usual from being everyone’s spiritual guru and- lately- Alexandria’s instructor when it came to hand-to-hand self defense and crop growing. Aaron had to admit, they’d always been a little underprepared and slightly underwhelming when compared to the Hilltop.

Paul smiles gently, looks peaceful; sometimes Aaron swears the neatly groomed man who more than passed for Christ himself also sort of glowed. Especially when he had a brilliant, or slightly wicked, thought.

He’d been rummaging through the cupboards, looking for something to make for dinner, when he realized all the trouble his big blond had gone through. “What the- did you...on purpose?”

Aaron smiled in reply, turning a bit red when he winked. This was his dorky way of flirting and the other man loved it. But he didn’t love to lose. And he wasn’t about to. If this was a game, Paul was going to win. Aaron was always the welcome shared recipient of the usually sexy spoils of war.

A kick off the base boarding, a delicate turn of his hips that tilted his body nearly horizontal in midair and somehow gave him goddamn *lift* at the same time; and all at once he’d opened a top cupboard and swiped the can he’d been searching for. 

Damn.

***

Talking of height differences, and while we’re at it reputations; Paul had gained notoriety as a dangerous man for his martial arts skills. The thing was, he was really very much like his nickname: zen as all hell.

Aaron had seen him take a beating even knowing he could win a 10:1 fight because...it was the right thing to do to maintain peace and he didn’t have that masculine hang-up of not being about to take a loss and walk away with his confidence intact (for fun, he plays for keeps but when the stakes are high, pride is always in the rear-view mirror for him). If it was an advantage to take one for the team, he did, gracefully and easily. 

The big, often (in his own element at least) dorky blond was the secret danger. People spoke about that crazy-eyed demon that came out of Rick in times of danger. Aaron had it too, to a slightly lesser and more manageable extent. Especially if someone he cared for was in danger; the man wasn’t much of a fighter and thanks for his former life of almost being a politician and working in the NGO, he was a pretty peaceful guy that preferred talking his way out of a problem. Most of the time. 

Paul had seen it just a few times. An almost berserker rage that was half terrifying. Both for the limitless capacity he knew Rick had to be a crazy badass and general concern for either man’s safety. Aaron could put it away with more ease than their fearless leader but he needed reassurance from the man at his side. Paul hadn’t known Eric but he imagined that the deceased in their time together had known about this just as much as he knew about Aaron’s tendency to be the first to cry, the first to show and share his feelings. 

All in all, it wasn’t a bad trade off. 

***

One more thing.

Considering the height difference one might assume Aaron had a kink.

The exact opposite was true. 

He tells Aaron shortly after the very first time they screw around that he’s ‘lucky’.

“Why’s that, Jesus?” The blond clings a little after, which makes the other smirk. This thing between them, outside of their own imaginations, had *just* happened and the big man was holding him like a familiar lover. Like a thing he needed more than the physical release they’d just shared.

“Because I won’t even give a guy a second look if he doesn’t clear 6 feet.”

**Author's Note:**

> If I ever mention timelines in my fics don't expect perfection. The creators don't either. ;)


End file.
